me, too

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:14:55 -0500

I know what you mean about multiple machines and hard drives, and (be still my heart) 20" monitors. But there are a lot of people in the market for simple email and web surfing only. They don't fall into the web professional/IT/big-time-geek category like you and I apparently do. To someone like that, it might be the most economical and practical option to do all their web interactions with a small mobile device.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
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Re: Apple set to stir up the mobile web market

bobafifi — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:24:03 -0500

> Like the people who no longer have land line phones
> and rely on their mobile phone alone,

This is certainly a trend I've been seeing. About a year ago I started forwarding all my calls to my cell phone and turned off my home answering machine. I also stopped wearing a watch since there's a perfectly good clock in my cell phone and unlike my watch, is always on time since it gets it's data from an atomic clock somewhere at AT&T.

> I think eventually people will use an iPhone or
> something like it to replace a home computer.

I'm not so about that (I like having a 20" monitor, full size keyboard, mouse, several large hard drives, lots of different applications, etc.) , but I certainly do see it as offering another way to interact.

Thanks Virginia,

-Bob
bobafifi.com

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fluteplayer.net

Apple set to stir up the mobile web market

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:43:25 -0500

With the iPhone ready to release at the end of the month, Steve Jobs announced that Apple only wants 1% of the mobile web market. That's 1% of over a billion mobile units, not exactly small change. The mobile market is big and growing rapidly.

Apple further announced that its standards-compliant web browser, Safari, is now available in beta for Windows. Some people think these two announcements are related.

The reaction to the beta release of Safari for Windows has been mixed. Burningbird reports that it works fine for her. But other users are reporting crashes and various problems. The security people are predicting a bonanza for virus and malware makers. Keep in mind, it's a beta.

The connection to iPhone is that iPhone uses Safari. Mobile web + Safari + Windows. Are you filling in the equals sign and a dollar amount with lots of zeros? An article at Web Directions today called Safari the equivalent of Mosiac (the very first browser) for the mobile web. Here's the reasoning:

Many web developers have been waiting a long time for the fabled mobile web to arrive. From WAP 1.0, weâ€™ve been anticipating the web we can take everywhere, on mobile phones and similar devices.

A lot of people have been waiting the iPhone with extraordinary enthusiasm. Today Apple made two announcements which I think will have enormous impact on the future of the mobile web.

1. Webapps are the way for developers to write apps for the iPhone. But why thatâ€™s important is that they will run in Safari, the heart of which, Webkit, is an open source, highly standards compliant rendering engine, used not only in Safari, but in browsers like Nokiaâ€™s open source S60 platform.

2. Safari is now available on Windows (XP and Vista), so whether your primary platform for development is Mac or Windows (with Linux you arenâ€™t quite out of luck, as KHTML shares a lot of common functionality at its core with Safari), you have a standards compliant browser that will also allow you to target the iPhone.

Right now the iPhone comes at two price levels: $500 or $600. That will bar a lot of people from getting one. Plus the fact that you have to agree to a two-year contract with AT&T to use it. However, I think over time this will change. I have reasons.

The iPhone uses a wireless web. Always there at no extra charge and not tied to any home internet account.
The iPhone is capable of doing a whole lot of things, particularly email and web surfing, that many people now do with more expensive home computers.
You could write blog posts from anywhere using an iPhone.

Like the people who no longer have land line phones and rely on their mobile phone alone, I think eventually people will use an iPhone or something like it to replace a home computer.

Even if it is only 1% of the market, and Blackberry or Windows Mobile or Palm remain tough competition, the iPhone will change the way we do things, just as surely as the iPod/iTunes combination has.

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me, too

Re: Apple set to stir up the mobile web market

Apple set to stir up the mobile web market